


(Indecent) One

by carbonbased



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, musician au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-26
Updated: 2013-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-24 18:23:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/943169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carbonbased/pseuds/carbonbased
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John was a one hit wonder whose fifteen minutes of fame ended roughly half an hour ago. The chance to tour with Sherlock Holmes was his last one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a concept I have always loved and thought fit wonderfully with this fandom. I will try to update as frequently as possible, so please let me know what you think!

“Do you want it straight or do you want a touch of sugar coating John?”

“Just get on with it Harry.” 

“They don’t want to go ahead with the North American dates.” 

John Hamish Watson, at the age of 31, was no longer surprised by news like this. He could barely remember the time when he might have been. In fact, there was hardly any impulse at all to remind Harriet that there was nothing else on the schedule besides the North American dates all summer.

“What’s that mean then, what’s the new plan?” because Harry always had a plan, his little career would be even more non-existent if she hadn’t taken over management of it four years ago. It was a bit startling to realize the amount of dependency he had started to put on his recovering alcoholic of a sister. Granted, he’d made worse decisions. 

Dropping out of medical school six years ago was definitely starting to look like one of them. 

At the time, it had seemed like the logical thing to do. As much as he loved helping people, there was no spark there. Half way through his degree, John just hadn’t been interested anymore. Wasn’t that what people were meant to do? Pursue what their hearts told them was right? Couldn’t that be true even if all you wanted was for a few people to like the words you’d written, maybe hum along to the tune? 

“Well we have a few options, I’m not sure how much you’re going to like them though,” Harry said with her best apologetic looking grimace and John almost wanted to explain that there was really no need to feel bad about the news. It was what everyone had told him would happen after all. He hadn’t even bothered to pack a suitcase. 

“Start with the worst one then, give me something to look forward to,” he told her with what he thought was a surprisingly good nonchalant calm voice. As if it was someone else’s career headed for the toilet faster than it had started. 

“Okay, you can obviously just never mention that America had been a possibility to the press. Let the whole thing slide, maybe we put out a message on your website that you’re working on new material this summer.” 

“Except I’m not working on new material that anyone’s going to see,” John pointed out, leaving the silent _because the label won’t pay for another album_ to hang in the space around them. 

“That option just buys us some time, work with the reps to negotiate something better.” 

“What else is there Harry?” 

She seemed to hesitate, which meant that doing nothing for a few months (at the very least) had truthfully been her best suggestion. Leave it to Harry to ignore him when he asked for bad news. 

“You do the same venues as last year. England, France, Germany probably. I’m sure I can get the owners to put you up again, everyone loved you last time. We can give everything time to pick up but stay connected to the fans. Drum up some support and get you back in the bigger venues.” 

“I haven’t played any big arenas in two years and you know it.” 

All he played these days were small clubs in random cities. 

Even if she did know exactly that, Harry would never say as much. As a rule, no one brought up “Indecent” in front of him. John assumed it was meant to comfort him but there was no need. The song didn’t haunt him, didn’t keep him up at night. Sure, he had no idea what made people go crazy for only one of the pieces he’d written but he wasn’t ungrateful. It had gained him a loyal, if somewhat small, fanbase. If anyone had asked him, John would have said that being a one hit wonder wasn’t as bad as everyone had made it out to be. No one ever asked exactly that though. People asked if he thought his new record would live up to that moment in the spotlight, asked who the song was written about, if he ever got tired of playing it. The answer he gave to those questions was to just smile blandly. The honest answers were probably not, none of your business and god yes it just doesn’t matter to you. 

“Yes… that is true. Then the only other option I can think of John is to tell the label to put you down as an available supporting act.” 

“An available what?” there was no pretending that the tone of his voice gave away how undignified his brain found that idea. 

A supporting act? Play for half an hour to the people who got there early for good seats? Nobody did that, nobody went from sold out arenas to having their name in tiny print at the bottom of the poster. The way Harry increased her fidgeting let John know there was something she wasn’t telling him. 

“Spit it out, what else is there?,” he asked harshly, trying to remind himself that it was not surprising that his life had reached this point. 

“I….may or may not have already asked around the label, you know- to see what was out there,” she admitted sheepishly, looking down at her twisting fingers in her lap. 

“And what? You found something? I swear if you’ve signed me up to open for some pre-teen boy band I will never speak to you again Harry, you understand?,” John half mocked, though the cutting edge in his voice did not waver. 

“It’s nothing like that! It’s, well, it’s Sherlock Holmes,” his sister finally confessed. 

John had the fleeting thought that the look on his face would have been the dictionary definition of shocked, and it was a shame no one had a camera to document it for all of time. 

Sherlock Holmes. Jesus Christ, Harry really had well and truly lost her marbles. 

The man was infamous. Period. For the songs he wrote which seemed to defy all logic when it came to composition yet topped every chart. For the on stage performances with hoards of girls tearing down blockades in attempts to grab a handful of too tight black clothing. For the off-stage secrecy formed from a lack of interviews and a reputation for being a little more than difficult to work with. 

“You’ve got to be joking,” he said in a voice that matched his stupid looking shocked face. 

“It’s a great opportunity,” Harry protested loudly. 

“No, a great opportunity would be being offered a free lobotomy right about now, a tour with Sherlock Holmes is out of the question,” John yelled back. 

“Look, it’s the big time every night, nothing but arenas full of young girls who hey- might buy a t-shirt or cd off you. It’s a guarantee,” she argued, crossing her arms in a way that reminded John painfully of their mother when she use to insist it was bath time. 

“If it’s a guarantee, why do they need me?” 

“You know why, no one’s willing to work with him.” 

“Gee, I wonder why,” was his sarcastic reply. 

“No one else, so they’re desperate which is the only reason they are even willing to consider the guy who doesn’t have enough backing for a new album so can we please get our heads out of our arses and be realistic about this. You need to do it John, if you do a tour then it has to be this one,” Harry explained with a sigh. 

“How am I going to be any different from anyone else whose tried before?” 

“Because no one on the face of the Earth is half as stubborn as you fucking are, you aren’t going to let some bloke with pretty eyes push you around.” 

This might have been true but it didn’t sound like a good enough reason to argue to months of torture on the whim of his older sibling. John simply glared back. 

“Look, he’s doing a surprise performance tonight downtown, middle of Adler’s set.” 

Ah, Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler. One of the biggest mysteries in the business. The music industry’s answer to Brad and Angelina, if you were one to believe the rumours. 

“And if I hate everything about it?” 

“Then bail, no one has to know you even went. And if you agree to the tour, it starts here in London so you can always back out of that too.” 

John did not point out that backing out was an option simply because no one cared that much about opening acts. 

“What do people even wear to concerts these days?,” he asked with a sigh similar to his sisters, but Harry just squealed with delight as she often did when she got her way. 

John contented himself with remembering he didn’t have a suitcase packed yet.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, despite all the changes in my life (new house, new city, new everything!) I am finally back! So my sweeties, shall we continue? I do plan to update this with faaaaar more regularity now that I've got some of that to spare.

John was not nervous.

Definitely not. 

Nervous was the kind of thing a seventeen year old girl might be on her way to prom or a first date. 

John was doing neither of those things. He was an adult male perfectly capable of attending a live musical event without having a private mental fucking breakdown beforehand. 

End of story. 

If he had happened to tear his closet apart in the meantime, that was simply an unhappy coincidence. 

“I should just call the whole thing off,” he mumbled darkly to himself before throwing yet another- how many did he truly own?- beige jumper off to the side. He knew what the crowd would be like once he got to the concert hall. Young, in touch with current trends, wearing half a shirt or a skirt that looked like the curtains in his Nan’s house. They would not see the practicality of a loose fitted jumper and worn in jeans. 

John was too old for this and clearly in over his head. Thinking of heads made him wonder whether the lobotomy was still an option. 

“Wear the striped one.” 

“Did you know they’ve discovered being born two years earlier doesn’t actually mean you know everything?,” John snipped, tilting his head to look at Harry leaning against the door frame as she shrugged in response. 

“Just fits you nice, makes you look a bit less like a senior citizen. Try not to be so uptight about this okay? It’s not as if anyone’s expecting you to be there.” 

“Yes, I’m aware, don’t you have anything better to do?” 

“Better than watching you go mad? Not bloody likely,” she offered with a grin. 

That was the problem entirely. No one would notice him and John was simply being ridiculous. That thought did not stop him from pulling on the hem of his striped shirt for twenty more minutes. 

* * *

“You know he’s going to be there, don’t you?” 

“Of course.” 

“Of course?” 

“So far, so obvious.” 

“Oh, come now, I thought he was… intriguing.” 

“You always do, until you figure out what they like as you so elegantly put it. Then you are forced to face the facts. It is a harsh world we live in, best to just grin and bear it. ” 

_She has the worst sort of laugh. More of a cackle, really._

“Sweetheart, if I didn’t give them a fighting chance I’d be as bored as you are.” 

“Yes, thank you ever so much for your overwhelming sympathy.” 

“Well, you know what those boys over at the label do. Try to stick some sorry sap with you and pat themselves on the back because they tried really really hard, it just didn’t work out. Predictable, even by us normal peoples’ standards.” 

“That doesn’t make it any less hateful.” 

“I thought that the great Sherlock Holmes didn’t care who his opening act was, or even if he had one.” 

“He doesn’t. That doesn’t mean he wishes to be saddled with any talentless hack off the street.” 

“My, aren’t we touchy today darling.” 

“Mrs. Hudson took my skull again.” 

“Ah, well that explains it, doesn’t it? Now, be a good boy and pass me that lipstick there.” 

“Blood red again?” 

“Of course.” 

“Right, he’s intriguing, how could I possibly forget.” 

“So far, so obvious.” 

_Her cat like smile was just as unnerving as her laugh_

* * *

John was ancient. Prehistoric. Really, truly, incredibly, unbelievably old. He wouldn’t have stood out anymore if he’d come limping into the smokey club hobbled over a cane. Judging by the withering looks he was getting from the teenagers ( _the_ teenagers, when had he started thinking like that?), they probably believed he’d simply elected to leave his walker at home for the night. 

Thirty one years old and John was growing concerned for the state of his pension. That felt like a good enough excuse if anyone asked what had driven him to drink. 

The small bar wasn’t much better but most people were more interested in pushing their way to the front of the stage than they were in getting pissed at that moment. John decided to take what small blessings he could and ordered a scotch. He pointedly ignored the look the bartender gave when his order wasn’t for some neon fruit flavoured concoction. 

“I’m going to assume you don’t go out in disguise very often then,” a grey haired man leaning against the bar asked and John tried to crush the wave of panic washing over him. 

Looking the man over, John was reasonably sure he’d never met him before. How it was that this stranger seemed to fit in better was a question he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer to. 

“Not enough interest to justify a larger budget in the costume department,” John snipped back with a shrug, causing the other man to give a gruff laugh. 

“Suppose that’s true, ain’t it? Not everyone puts on a production, suppose he just does it for the hell of it,” the man mused to himself, chuckling down at a mostly empty pint. 

“I’m sorry, whose this?,” John asked, losing track of what was one of his more sober bar side talks. 

“Sherlock of course,” was the friendly reply, if not a little exasperated but John still narrowed his eyes. It was one thing for a random member of the crowd to recognize him, it was quite another for the same member to know about the surprise appearance coming up. 

“Greg Lestrade, manager,” the man, Greg, said once he apparently realized that John’s suspicious look was the only answer he could expect. 

“Did my sister tell you I was coming?” 

The man laughed kindly again before saying, “No, one of the first things you learn from being around Sherlock is that he knows a hell of a lot more about everything than he has any right to. Bastard’s got no sense of privacy.” 

“Right,” so Sherlock Holmes knew he was going to be there, that John was debating whether a career boost was worth months of exposure to the most talked about man in music. Great. 

“Don’t let me stop you though, he’s not really as bad as the papers make him seem,” Lestrade hastily added. 

John gave him a sceptical look. 

“Right, suppose they might be right about him occasionally. I do think Sherlock is a good man though, if he stopped with all the bloody bullshit antics he might even be a great one. People just don’t get him right away, and then they stop trying to figure it out you know?” 

It was a sentiment John could relate to. He’d long ago reached the point where people simply didn’t care about what he’d had to say about anything that wasn’t ‘Indecent’. They didn’t want to find out who John Watson was as a person, just as the guy who wrote their favourite song that one time. 

“Just enjoy the show alright,” the other man said with a shrug and a pat on John’s shoulder as he made to leave. 

John gave a tiny nod but was quickly swallowed up by the growing crowd. 

* * *

It was pandemonium. 

John tried to remember whether this was how all concerts were or if it was specifically related to a room containing Irene Adler. 

If that was the case, he had to admit it was justified. 

It was impossible to look anywhere else the seconds the lights in the house had dropped to show a supremely unfair backlit hourglass silhouette. She was captivating, intriguing and the dictionary definition of seduction. The woman had a few thousand people eating out of the palm of her hand and they all knew it. Each song came with a pounding bass beat and a smooth voice that seemed to slip lyrics into your ear like silk. 

_Poor boy, never stood a chance did you?_  
 _No I don’t care what they say, oh what they say_  
 _How bout we run away_  
 _Run away_  
 _Run away_  
 _Together, forever, maybe just tonight_  
 _Poor boy Imma make you feel alright  
_

Every single female, along with a good part of the male population, was screeching the words back while jumping and clapping to the beat with each instruction that they were given by the songstress. John couldn’t help but relax with a smile as the crowd jostled past him from where he stood near the back. It had always felt right being where ever music was appreciated and these people, no matter their age, did seem to be enjoying the bubbley pop being performed. 

Then, at the end of her new energetic single, Irene urged the crowd for one more thunderous round of clapping which seemed to set off a huge cloud of smoke. This sent the room into full screams of excitement that John found hard to believe. He watched as an entire room full of people became unable to control themselves as the smoke (theater trick, John knew) began to clear to reveal a stage empty of all but plain black painted instruments which were very different from the candy coloured ones of before. 

A flash of brilliant white light flooded the building, blinding the frantic audience for a moment when a single bass beat of the drums was heard followed by the wail of a guitar. 

It was pandemonium before. John came to the conclusion that there was not a word fit to describe the crowd when Sherlock Holmes stepped out of the shadows dressed in tight black trousers and an equally tight deep purple button up. The flashes of camera phone intensified as the bass guitar picked up the beat while Sherlock himself practically sauntered up to the microphone. 

The rest of the night was a blur for John. 

He’d found himself thrust into the crowd amongst the mad rush to get as close to the stage as physically possible. John had to admit he’d spent far too long being in awe of the man whose raspy deep voice filled the room with words which the fans sang along with so loudly John thought he could feel it in his spine, each line in the verse getting progressively louder until Sherlock himself was screaming them/ 

_This isn't murder_  
 _It’s assisted suicide_  
 _It’s an ‘I told you so’_  
 _From all the times_  
 _When I didn't think I’d make_  
 _I was right the whole time_  
 _And the look in your eyes_  
 _Has felt like goodbye for so long_  
 _Im not even sure if this is really home_  
 _Or if I’ve just always been on my own  
_

John marvelled at the anger that came from who he’d expected to be such a composed person, at the raw emotion clear on the parts of that sweat drenched face that weren’t obscured by unruly black curls with every toss of the head to the beat. The crowd seemed to feel along with Sherlock, a few girls were even crying while simultaneously reaching out their hands to try and grab something of this celebrity. John would have questioned the sanity in that normally but nothing about Sherlock Holmes performing felt normal, simply otherworldly. 

The singer had many songs which felt like anthems to the younger generation present, perfect poetic slaps in the face to the powers that be.There were slower songs as well, performed by just Sherlock and a piano the stage crew wheeled out. These were no less painful as the singer seemed to crumple around the instrument with each vehement word whispered into the attached microphone. 

_I just wanted to make it quiet enough_  
 _That I couldn't hear you leaving_  
 _No I don't think it matters so much_  
 _If I’m having some trouble breathing_  
 _And if I ever did_  
 _Well then I don't anymore_  
 _Because you went and left me_  
 _With that empty door_  
 _And nothing else_  
 _And that can't be how love felt_  
 _So what if I’ve got my vices_   
_They haven’t let me down yet  
_

When the lights came down for the final call, the crowd was a mob and John felt a certainty he hadn’t in a long time. 

It could very well be the worst decision he ever made but John Watson knew he couldn’t walk away from the spectacle he’d just witnessed. Sherlock Holmes was something else and John needed to know what that was exactly. 


End file.
